Robin Squire - Ministerial Career

Ministerial Career

On 14 April 1992, in the immediate aftermath of the United Kingdom general election, 1992, Squire was appointed Under Secretary of State for the Environment. In this capacity he was variously described as the "inner cities minister" or the "local government minister". His background as a Council leader made him an obvious choice for this role and he appeared to work harmoniously with Michael Howard, the then Secretary of State for the Environment.

However, on 28 May 1993 he was moved to the post of Under Secretary of State for Education, serving under Secretary of State John Patten and later Gillian Shephard. In this capacity he was generally known as the "schools minister" and occasionally as the "school discipline minister". He held this post until the Conservative government fell in May 1997. The official reason given for the move was that one of the other education ministers (Baroness Blatch) sat in the House of Lords and it was felt that an experienced House of Commons operator like Squire was needed to front government policy on schools.

During his 4 years as Schools Minister, Squire was involved in many high-profile issues. These included the introduction of the OFSTED schools inspection regime, published league tables for school performance, the ability of state sector schools to opt-out of local authority control as "grant-maintained" schools, nursery education vouchers and the introduction of the first state funded Muslim schools. Many of these reforms survived the change of government in 1997 and became features of Labour education policy.

He is reported to have "barked down" some of the more extreme proposals to deal with the threat of school shootings after the Dunblane massacre in 1996. This incident occurred when a crazed individual with a gun entered a primary school and shot a number of pupils and teachers.

During the final months of the Major government, Squire was identified with the "Conservative Mainstream" group of MPs. This group was composed of centrist, one-nation members who sided with John Major in his confrontations with Eurosceptics and right-wingers.

In the United Kingdom general election, 1997, Squire was defending a 9,165 majority in his constituency at Hornchurch. His personal popularity plus his prominence as a Minister lead him to believe that he would hold the seat, "This was the one time when I thought my seat was safe..." but he lost the seat to Labour's John Cryer with a 16% swing and a 5,680 Labour majority.